VENTURA : Top Smog Cop Retiring After Nearly 40 Years

After working nearly 40 years enforcing southern California’s tough anti-pollution laws, Al Danzig figures he is entitled to splurge.

So Danzig, who retires today as enforcement chief at the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District, has decided to buy a new car. And he has already picked the type--a Cadillac.

Although the car’s reputation as a gas guzzler may make it seem an unlikely choice for someone so dedicated to the environment, Danzig said the new models meet the state’s strict emission standards.

And for Danzig, that is the bottom line.

“If you’re not violating the law,” he said, “that’s fine.”

Danzig has made it his business since 1956 to make sure motorists, businesses and even government offices abide by clean air laws.

As a smog cop for the South Coast Air Quality Management District in the late 1950s, Danzig patrolled the Hollywood Freeway in Los Angeles for smoke-belching cars and trucks.

Wearing a badge and a blue uniform and driving a black-and-white patrol car, Danzig and other smog cops stopped and cited drivers whose vehicles did not meet pollution-control standards. AQMD officials decided in the 1970s to stop using smog cops, who had been unarmed, because the job had become too dangerous, Danzig said.

Danzig served in various enforcement jobs with the AQMD for 28 years and then with the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District for 5 1/2 years before coming to Ventura County in January, 1989.

Following his retirement, he will work part-time for the Environmental Protection Agency, traveling around the country training air pollution control inspectors.

Under Danzig’s leadership in Ventura County, the staff of the Air Pollution Control District’s enforcement division has grown from three people to 16. And the number of fines that the department collects from polluting businesses has grown from about $25,000 a year to $250,000.

Although he still considers himself a smog cop, Danzig said his department tries to collaborate with the 1,400 businesses it regulates rather than just punish them.

Danzig and his team of inspectors try to help dry cleaners, chemical companies and other businesses that emit pollutants comply with clean-air laws by upgrading their equipment, he said.

But the toughest part of his job, Danzig said, has been enforcing Ventura County’s controversial Rule 210--the law that makes employers responsible for getting workers to car-pool, use mass transit or find other ways to work rather than driving alone in their automobiles.

Asking people to change their driving habits is far more difficult than forcing companies to install new equipment, he said. “Now we’re dealing with social evolution instead of technological evolution.”